If you knock on Lisa Nutt’s front door on a warm afternoon, she probably won’t answer. But don’t take it personally. Since redesigning the landscape of her North Little Rock home, Lisa doesn’t spend much time inside the house. You are more likely to find her in the backyard—walking in the shade of her Japanese maples, listening to the calm trickle of the koi pond’s waterfall, or getting her hands dirty in flowerbeds that are thick with ferns, begonias and purple salvia.
“I’m never inside the house anymore,” Lisa says while standing on the flagstone walkway that weaves through her meticulously planned outdoor oasis.
On the grounds of the stately home, tiers of flowerbeds slope downward toward the dock, where the calm waters of the neighborhood lake lap softly against the family’s favorite fishing spot. To Lisa and her husband, David, their roots in this land and home run as deep as the roots of the giant oak trees that canopy the yard. “David’s grandfather lived here,” Lisa says about the home, which was built in 1959. “David grew up fishing on this spot.”
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